Phoenix, Tucson officers sue over Arizona's new immigration law

David Salgado remembers when, as a 9-year-old boy, he would head out at 4 a.m. to pick up newspapers for his south Phoenix delivery route.

Most mornings, the Phoenix police officer in charge of patrolling Salgado's neighborhood was there, too.

"He would be parked in his car, and it gave me a good feeling knowing he was looking out for me," he said.

Now a Phoenix police officer himself, Salgado, 51, patrols the Phoenix streets just a few miles from where he grew up and where his mother still lives.

The officer has worked to establish relationships and trust with the majority of Hispanic residents in the central Phoenix Garfield neighborhood.

That trust began to crack days after Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law Senate Bill 1070, which makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they have reasonable suspicion of being in the country illegally. It goes into effect July 29.

Salgado filed suit last month in U.S. District Court against Brewer and Phoenix. In his claim, he says that to enforce the law, he would violate the rights of Hispanics and be forced to expend his own time and resources to familiarize himself with the law's requirements.

"The problem is this is an immigration-law issue, and for me to enforce immigration is going to be difficult because of training," Salgado said in an interview with The Arizona Republic. "It's going to take away from me concentrating on more serious crimes."

Salgado's lawyer, Augustine Jimenez, said he expects the new law to be found unconstitutional.

Jimenez said the law creates an environment in which people will think they are being racially profiled.

"Even if an officer acts in non-racial terms, you're going to get lawsuits," Jimenez said. "People are going to feel profiled."

The Phoenix City Attorney's Office said it had not been served with a suit and declined to comment further.

When Brewer signed the statute, she directed the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, the agency in charge of training guidelines for a majority of Arizona's police officers, to develop officer training to properly implement the new immigration law.

She has since defended the new law and criticized what she described as "mistruths" about the new law that have caused criticism around the country.

The law requires that an officer engaged in a "lawful stop, detention or arrest" also ask about a person's legal status when reasonable suspicion exists that the person is in the U.S. illegally. Race, color or national origin cannot be considered "except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution."

Polls have indicated that most Arizonans support the measure.

The suit is not the only one in Arizona filed by a police officer seeking to stop the law.

A spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office said the office hadn't been served with a suit and therefore had no comment.

Escobar's suit claims the new law compels him to engage in racial profiling to prove legal status and could hinder investigations because he often depends on cooperation and information from Hispanic witnesses and victims. Escobar patrols the southern area of Tucson, where Hispanics make up more than 50 percent of the population.

At a time when Tucson police are facing a budget crisis that has officers taking furlough days, Escobar questioned whether they'll receive adequate immigration training.

"Now, they're asking us to step up and enforce federal laws. That's the expertise of the Border Patrol and ICE," he said. "They don't investigate domestic violence and robberies. And I don't have the training to investigate immigration."

Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris has expressed concern that the new law could strain local resources, while the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, of which Salgado is a member, has spoken in favor of the new law, saying it is critical in giving officers the ability to question people about their immigration status.

Salgado said he first heard about SB 1070 when Phoenix police officers started escorting droves of high-school students who were ditching class to protest at the state Capitol.

About a week later, he was watching television when Brewer signed the bill.

"I said: 'Let me read this bill. She signed it, and now I'm going to have to enforce it.' "

Salgado said he believes the law is too vague because it doesn't exclude victims or witnesses from being questioned or turned over to immigration officials when finished with the investigation. The 19-year police veteran also had never seen a statute in which anyone could file a lawsuit against an officer and the department if either were suspected of not doing their job.

Conversations with his fiancee, mother and other family members followed.

"I explained to them what I felt as an officer and my duty as far as helping the community," Salgado said. "I'm doing the right thing. When you do something with a good heart and good intentions, you will never fail."

He worries about people like his 78-year-old mother, a U.S. citizen, who starts speaking in Spanish whenever she becomes nervous, he said.

"You're going to have families, three, four, five generations in the U.S. questioned," he said. "It's going to happen."

Then, there is concern about Hispanic residents, legal and not, no longer going to police out of fear.

"They fear we're going to take action on their status," Salgado said. "It's a large concern as an officer because you built a trust that went down the drain."

Salgado has already seen a change.

"I was driving around (in the patrol car) the Sunday after she signed it, and nobody would wave to me," Salgado said. "They used to wave."